Quality content is critical for a website to succeed. Offering valuable information will help educate your visitors about your brand, product or services.

The more helpful your content, the more likely that your readers will keep coming back for more.

Writing articles doesn’t come easy for everyone; but, it’s a necessary skill you’ll need to succeed in the online world. The following steps will walk you through the basics of how to write an article.

1.) Choose The Focus Keywords for Your Article

This is probably the single most important step when writing articles for the web. You will want to choose keywords that are relevant to the topic you’ll be writing about.

The tool will show you how many searches there are for your chosen keyword, as well as other related keywords and their search volumes.

Select one primary keyword for your article and two to three closely related terms.

2.) Create an Outline

Now that you have chosen your keywords, it’s time to draft an outline for your article.

Your outline can be as simple or elaborate as you choose. Start by listing your main topic, then list at least three main points that you want to write about.

For each of your main points, list three or four sub-points. Here is an example of an outline for this article:

Article – Writing Articles

I. Choose Keywords – Importance of Choosing Good Keywords – Using Google Keyword Tool – Select main and related terms II. Create an outline – 3 main points -3-4 sub-points for each main point III. Write Intro – Briefly discuss main topic and major points of article – How will reader benefit? – Capture Interest etc.

3.) Writing Your Introduction

Your article’s introduction will let your reader know briefly what the article is all about.

In it, you’ll want to introduce your major points and how reading your article will benefit your visitor.

This is your chance to draw your audience in and capture their attention. Make your introduction informative, but it should be kept brief and provide only an overview of what’s to come.

4.) Write the Body of Your Article

It’s now time to start writing the body of your article, using the outline you created in step 2.

Start each paragraph with a sentence explaining one your major points. Then, write two or three sentences that support that point.

Rinse and repeat for each of your remaining major points. If you’ve written a thorough outline, this part should be pretty easy.

5.) Write the Conclusion Paragraph

Every article should conclude with a paragraph that summarizes the information given in the article. Go over your key points again and briefly sum up what your reader should have learned from reading your article.

That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. I know, sometimes easier said than done.

With my own article writing, I do find that taking the time to write an outline really does help the whole process go faster.

I hope that the above steps will help you in writing your own articles.

If you’re a website owner, you probably already understand the importance of having quality content. The problem is, you can have great content and still find that you have no traffic. No traffic means no sales. So, how do you create great articles that also deliver targeted traffic?

The answer is SEO content writing.

SEO content writing differs from plain old vanilla content writing in that it is specifically targeted to one or more keyword phrases. Search engines rank website pages using a combination of factors, commonly referred to as an algorithm. One of the many factors considered when ranking a page is the actual content on the page.

Every search engine attempts to deliver the most relevant content possible to searchers, and one of the ways they do this is by matching up the searcher’s term with phrases found in website content.

If you’re not using targeted keywords or phrases in your articles, your page may not be considered relevant enough for the search engines to rank it highly.

Think of it this way, if your article is about dog training, yet you don’t use the phrase dog training on your page, why would the search engines find it relevant when a visitor searches for that term?

That’s not to say it’s impossible to rank for a term that isn’t found on your site, but it definitely makes it more difficult. In order to make your articles as relevant as possible, and help them to rank higher in search engines, your content needs to be optimized for the keywords you want to be found for.

The best way to write SEO content

Whenever you write new content for your site, you should use your target keyword phrase several times within the body of your text. You’ll want to use it in the title of your article, the first paragraph, last paragraph and somewhere within the body of the article.

It’s also a smart idea to use a few other closely related terms in your article, as well. For example, if your article is about dog training, you may want to use the terms obedience training or leash training.

Having a website that generates a lot of traffic means having a website that is attractive not only to human readers, but to search engines, as well. While you don’t want to go overboard with your use of keywords (ie. keyword stuffing), you do want to make sure that you’re targeting a specific keyword with each article you write.

SEO content writing will help you deliver useful information to your site’s visitors, while helping to increase your page’s visibility in the search engines.